EPISODE 033
Create the Business you Wish to See in the World
With Liya Shuster-Bier
When Liya Shuster-Bier was diagnosed with cancer, she immediately cut off her hair, froze her eggs, called her friends and prepared for a fight. But what she didn’t know was that she was about to go to battle for a better future for all cancer patients, everywhere.
Liya Shuster-Bier is the founder and CEO of Alula, the first digital platform to help cancer patients and caregivers navigate the symptoms of cancer treatment and everyday clinical care outside of the hospital.
Before founding Alula, Liya began her career in community development and impact investing, starting out on the corporate currency derivatives team at Goldman Sachs. As a female CEO, cancer survivor and immigrant from Baku, Liya is proud to speak on the struggles of fundraising for women-owned businesses, and how her experience of facing down death has radically changed her style of leadership.
Beautiful ideas start with experiences.
Liya was undergoing chemotherapy and her friends were trying to help. After receiving several pink ribbon blankets in response to her diagnosis with non-hodgkin’s lymphoma, she made a striking realization: Our communities desperately want to support us, but they don’t know how.
Liya founded Alula from her hospital bed.
She set out to design a pseudo gift registry for cancer patients and ended up creating something much bigger: A service dedicated to supporting patients through cancer with products, advice, community and frank conversations. With Alula, Liya created the type of support she had wished for during her own treatment.
Who are you serving and how?
Creating a company starts with an idea, and it is sustained by passionately serving the people you founded it for.
When listening to Liya’s incredible story, ask yourself: How can you expand and deepen your offers to provide services that improve the lives of your consumers?
Quotes
“I feel fortunate to be able to lend my brain to something that makes life for others so much better.”
“Our big goal is to make life with cancer liveable.”
“We will become a clinical provider. Our goal is to have everything reimbursable by insurance, so we can democratize it.”
“I felt so much pressure to ‘Beat cancer’ and be a cancer survivor’ during my fight, in my battle – all these metaphors for cancer – and it had become such a new part of who I was. I wanted to ensure that our product was focused on navigability of cancer without a point of view on whether or not you survive. How do we support patients regardless of the outcome?”
Links mentioned in this episode:
Podcast Resources
Check out the Alula website at https://myalula.com/
Follow Alula on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/ouralula/
Follow Alula on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ouralula/
Connect with the team at Alula by emailing hello@myalula.com
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